How Gen AI is Reshaping Bank Marketing

Jim Marous (00:12):

Welcome to another episode of Banking Transformed, the podcast that dives deep into the trends, innovations, and strategies shaping the future of banking. I'm your host, Jim Marous, owner, and CEO of the Digital Banking Report, and co-publisher of The Financial Brand.

Jim Marous (00:27):

Today, we're joined in the Banking Transformed Podcast by Abbas Merchant, ex CMO and EVP at Regions Bank. It's clear that the role of the marketer is evolving, and those that can effectively harness the power of gen AI while maintaining a focus on creativity, strategy, and consumer trust will be well positioned for success.

Jim Marous (00:48):

As a senior financial services leader with the extensive experience in blending the art and science of marketing, Abbas brings the unique perspective on how generative AI is poised to revolutionize the marketing landscape.

Jim Marous (01:01):

In this episode, we'll explore the potential of generative AI, its implications for marketers, and how it's set to transform the way we approach marketing strategies and operations. We’ll also talk about how marketers can get prepared in the future of generative AI.

Jim Marous (01:18):

From automated tactical tasks to enabling more strategic decision making, generative AI offers both opportunities and challenges for marketers. Abbas recently authored a thought-provoking white paper titled, “How generative AI Will Change Marketing and the Role of the Marketer,” and we're excited to dive deeper into this topic with him.

Jim Marous (01:39):

So, Abbas, you were at Regions Bank for about three and a half years, as well as other financial institutions prior to Regions. What have you seen to be the biggest transformation in marketing over your career?

Abbas Merchant (01:52):

I have Jim, first of all, good afternoon. Great to be here with you and look forward to our conversations. Jim, I've focused my career on really that very question. Can marketing catalyze business transformation and drive growth?

Abbas Merchant (02:13):

And throughout my over 20 plus years, I have sort of been at the forefront of bringing about the transformation, learning from it sometimes, successes and then learnings have been had all throughout that timeframe.

Abbas Merchant (02:30):

The first transformation really that I saw in marketing was that within financial services, particularly marketing is generally tend to be used for communications. It generally focuses on only one of the four Ps, which is selling a product, promoting a product.

Abbas Merchant (02:53):

Whereas when I was in CPG industry, I really got the opportunity to see what it means to be a truly customer-centric organization, where marketing really plays a role of all the four Ps with the customer at the center of it.

Abbas Merchant (03:14):

So, really one of the key transformation that marketing brings is really help banks transforming themselves from being more product centric, inward focused organizations to become more customer centric. And data insights about customers is a core element to that.

Abbas Merchant (03:35):

Another element within marketing, just looking at the marketing part of it, is really marketing used to be much more as I would say, pray and spray. It used to be mass media oriented and that has been transformed, changed drastically over the last two decades.

Abbas Merchant (03:53):

Now, vast majority of marketing is measurable, it's transparent, and we can really attribute results and outcomes to it. So, that's another part of marketing that has been really valuable.

Abbas Merchant (04:05):

And the third and the most important one is really … what I have found is banks haven't fully grasped the role that marketing play in transforming the bank from product to becoming customer centered and that starts with strategy.

Abbas Merchant (04:26):

If marketing can help bring customer insights through strategic segmentation, which I've done at multiple of the key institutions I've been at, really not just as a tactical tool, but rather as a strategic understanding of customers to help shape the strategy for the bank, which then translates into how do we redefine the bank's value proposition?

Abbas Merchant (04:54):

And then gets into really how do we focus on what are the key segments that we will focus on, the priorities segments, and then developing value propositions rather than just selling the products that we have, creating products and solutions that customers actually want to buy.

Abbas Merchant (05:15):

So, to me, those are the three ways in which I have been able to contribute to the banks in bringing about the transformation. And the third one, the strategic transformation is critical, and you have to earn your way to really become a strategic partner to the business lines. Let me pause there.

Jim Marous (05:38):

So, Abbas, in your white paper, you mentioned that generative AI has a power to supercharge the right brain functions just much as left brain, such as creativity and artistic expertise. When you look at generative AI and the power it has, what do you see as the biggest impact for financial marketers in the near term?

Abbas Merchant (06:00):

Yeah, absolutely. So, let me take a step back and talk about, because it's really generative AI when it's complemented with sort of the predictive AI, it can really become even more powerful. So, in banks we are not new to AI. We've been using AI for a very long time in targeting, decisioning, SEO, SEM, all different ways.

Jim Marous (06:30):

And actually, starting with fraud and risk.

Abbas Merchant (06:33):

Totally. It started there and it has permeated through marketing. And in fact, all of the predictive models that we build for product choice, for offer targeting, all have some element of AI in their decisioning platforms, our next best action tools all leverage AI.

Abbas Merchant (06:54):

But those are more using narrow AI, which has sort of based on classification and prediction capabilities and is generally focused on a specific outcome or a goal. What is different about gen AI, which is really exciting, is that it goes into the realm of general AI. It gets us closer to that. It's certainly not that but it gets close to that.

Abbas Merchant (07:21):

And another part that I think it complements well, the narrow AI is really, if you think of narrow AI is more of the calculative part of our brain. Gen AI brings in the creative part of the brain and this is a really exciting technology, and what makes it really powerful is that it can understand context. That's one part of it.

Abbas Merchant (07:52):

It can understand context and then be able to really come up with new ways of connecting the dots. It can also, with the most recent developments in gen AI, where it has with what they call the multimodal large language models, they have the ability to translate text into images, text into video, images into infographics, which really opens up the field really broad. And it’s exciting to see that there are so many applications.

Abbas Merchant (08:30):

And especially for marketing, if you look at our marketing teams and our resources, capabilities and staff, majority of our resources are focused on important, but tactical tasks like writing content, developing images, creative, and so on, those are all key areas that this could really influence.

Jim Marous (08:53):

Well, it's interesting because to that degree, you have so many variations you can do based on segment, based on individual qualifications and personalization aspects. And then generative AI can also help in the automated deployment of that creative as well, can't it?

Abbas Merchant (09:11):

It can, and especially, this is where marketing automations comes into play. So, there are tools already on the market big platforms that have incorporated, which were marketing automation tools already preexisting, whether it's Adobe, Salesforce, and numerous other sprinkler that have incorporated generative AI so that you can actually develop the content, the creative, and deploy it using the marketing automation tools as well as do automated testing. So, it could be really that the role of the marketers will change.

Abbas Merchant (09:53):

I mean, where we used to spend a lot of our time in creating content from scratch, now we'll be actually validating, reviewing the content, and then they'll free up time for us marketers to really focus on more strategic issues and topics, which we really haven't had the luxury to focus on in the past.

Jim Marous (10:18):

Well, it's interesting too, Abbas, that just like a lot of technology and innovation that's taken place in the last 5 to 10 years, it really enables smaller organizations to have a limited staff to work like big organizations that had massive numbers of data analysts and other things supporting their work to do things at scale, doesn't it?

Jim Marous (10:41):

Because it really brings the power of what has only been enabled to the biggest organizations to the smaller firms, correct?

Abbas Merchant (10:51):

Totally, I think that is spot on, Jim. I mean, technology has consistently been the great equalizer. Everybody who has a phone has access to Google. They can search and learn and gain insights, ask questions, and this just makes those tools even more powerful. And I completely agree that this will democratize access to personalization.

Abbas Merchant (11:22):

What took the capabilities that, let's say a decade ago took a lot of capital investment in servers, hardware which were a prerequisite before you could leverage technology today with the cloud platforms, you can access it without making any significant capital investments upfront.

Abbas Merchant (11:45):

So, I agree completely. I think this will be transformative in terms of democratizing access to everybody, especially the people that are the banks and institutions that are not as large as the big ones.

Jim Marous (12:02):

And then it really gets down to it, and you've referenced in your white paper, and I think it's a great white paper to get ahold of and read is the fact that the education of financial marketers today can also be driven by generative AI.

Jim Marous (12:19):

So, in other words, if you want to get up to speed, we talked about it before we went live in the podcast, that if you graduate from university more than five years ago, you're already behind the curve on what the capabilities are.

Jim Marous (12:33):

That said, the ability to learn the power of generative AI, to learn how you can use generative AI to really update and modernize your marketing platform and marketing ideas, is now available to anybody at any size of organization.

Jim Marous (12:47):

So, if you're behind the curve, generative AI not only can be deployed in ways that make you modernize but can help educate you as to how that's done.

Jim Marous (12:56):

We talked about Raja Rajamannar's book, the marketing director from MasterCard on his book, Quantum Marketing, which I also recommend to everybody, is that you can really glaze your eyes over by the number of things that are possible today.

Jim Marous (13:11):

Well, generative AI can help you learn what those are, and then how to deploy them so they can both educate you as well as help you on the deployment side, which I think is massively exciting for anybody that continually wants to keep up to date with what's possible.

Jim Marous (13:27):

You mentioned in your White Paper also that generative AI can be used for new product development and service innovation by analyzing so much data. Can you share any examples of what you've seen in the marketplace, either financial or non-financial as how innovative firms are actually using generative AI to update product lines and services?

Abbas Merchant (13:49):

Yeah. Jim, it's amazing what's available through generative AI. And let me take a step back and say that what makes that possible is that we, today, people today spend more time in digital channels and social channels than ever before searching for information, sharing our preferences, reviewing, providing feedback, seeking information, all of that information is available out there.

Abbas Merchant (14:22):

And the gen AI engines scour through these mountains of this data and are able to generate context, be able to classify that information and really be able to create very interesting links, linkages across different sort of topics of information.

Abbas Merchant (14:46):

For example, I'll give you, I was doing some research, and I was querying, providing some questions in ChatGPT to look for what are the biggest concerns among young consumers regarding banking. And it highlighted the concerns and then through multiple prompts, I got into what are the top-of-mind issues.

Abbas Merchant (15:17):

And of course, financial anxiety came up as being a key issue, especially among ... then I said, "Does it vary by gender?" So, it was able to identify and delineate that there's much higher level of financial anxiety about financial matters among younger females than younger males, although it is high on both of those areas.

Abbas Merchant (15:40):

Then I looked at some of the sources. It not only cited the sources that we would've looked at if we were doing the research ourselves, but it looked at some of the studies from medical, psychological professions that had looked at the broader notion of anxiety and identified that financial anxiety is a core element, really.

Abbas Merchant (16:02):

So, that is really unique that it opens up your sort of the access to the information and the ability to scour through so much information, not just the obvious things, the areas you would look at, but also things that are not obvious. So, this actually creates or sparks greater level of creativity.

Abbas Merchant (16:27):

You are discovering, looking at a topic from multiple perspectives. So, that's really a core element of it that could be really valuable. I mean, you can use — and this is something that I'm sure we'll talk more about.

Abbas Merchant (16:49):

Today, the way Google and ChatGPT are structured, you have to be really skilled at asking the questions to get to the right answers. And there are about six elements that I have found through some of my work that are really critical.

Abbas Merchant (17:08):

You have to start with an action word, really, what is the task? You have to talk about the persona if you're looking for a specific segment. You have to talk about, give an example of where possible and what format do you want the information in. Otherwise, you'll get text after text.

Abbas Merchant (17:27):

So, I think that those are all the things that we have to really get skilled at and we are learning as we go on this. But I think that you can ask any question about a specific segment for an existing product or category, and really get some creative sort of brainstorming and answers which can be used as a first draft.

Abbas Merchant (17:59):

So, I'm not suggesting that you would use generative AI for it'll take the place of traditional research and insights, but it'll augment that, and it can really enhance the learnings that we get and be able to go deeper and wider in really covering the needs, attitudes, preferences of consumers when we are exploring a topic. Does that make sense?

Jim Marous (18:30):

Yeah. It totally does. And it's interesting because you kind of jumped ahead on where I was going to go, which is the same thing you said which is the skill sets that you need as a marketer are changing from the tactical skill sets that we used to have as marketers that I learned in school, and really how you can do better prompts to get to your destination.

Jim Marous (18:55):

You've used generative AI obviously quite a bit over the last couple years since it’s been introduced, I have as well. And you find that the way you ask questions is more important than anything today, because if you don't ask the questions correctly, you're going to get a subset of the potential answers.

Jim Marous (19:15):

So, I'm thinking if you took tactical learnings such as what you showed in your White Paper, as well as what Raj Rajamannar did in his Quantum Marketing book, but other tools as well. But just as importantly and more future looking, marketers in the future are going to have to learn how to structure their prompts to get the answers they want or not leave thoughts on the table.

Jim Marous (19:40):

You brought up the fact that you may want to say, you have to say in this way, you have to tell it to do this. You also want to tell it in what way do you want the response to come back. You want it like a professional, or do you want it geared to certain subsegments.

Jim Marous (19:56):

And the way they build that narrative, the way the generative AI tools actually can change the tonality. I mean, we've heard the stories of, "You can ask generative AI to give you your answer in the format of a rap song," you can do almost anything.

Jim Marous (20:13):

But we're going to have to learn it, not just marketer, but any professionals can have to learn. How do you structure your prompts to get you to where you want to go? You can’t just wing it because you’re not going to get the full focus of the answers.

Jim Marous (20:27):

And I think, when you look at what you've had to do as a marketer to improve your skill sets and to try to stay on top of what's available today without going back to school, what have you learned with regard to generative AI? What have you learned as far as how you ask the questions or how you prompt to get the answers you want?

Abbas Merchant (20:47):

Yeah, no, that's a great question. Look in my explorations, and I think this is more for a short-term timeframe because I think that these tools whether there's a ChatGPT or Google, they will want the tools to actually make the querying much more easier. So, to me, I gotten the best results.

Abbas Merchant (21:16):

You talked about tone, which is great. If you're asking ChatGPT to create some communication, what sort of a tone do you want? Do you want a funny, collegial? Do you want a friendly or professional? That's an important thing.

Abbas Merchant (21:35):

But the most important that I found is to start with an action word. That what do you want it to do? Give a persona, if you're talking about a specific part of the segment or an audience, the more specific you are, the better results you'll get.

Abbas Merchant (21:54):

Then it's a matter of also talking about an example giving one or two examples, because as I mentioned earlier, what is interesting about gen AI is that it understands the context, or it attempts to understand the context. So, if you can give examples, that is really valuable information.

Abbas Merchant (22:16):

And then another part is really the context around your question, around the action that you are asking it to do. And of course, the tone that we talked about, those are some of the key elements that can get you to better results.

Abbas Merchant (22:33):

The other thing that I found is that iterative process is really important. I was just doing some search where I was saying that, "Okay, let me see what I can learn about branches with extended Rs." So, I put in a big bank, and I said that, "Hey, are there customer satisfaction varies by branches with extended Rs versus branches with standard Rs?" And so, it said, "Yes, it does," and it gave a lot of qualitative input.

Abbas Merchant (23:08):

"So, can you actually show me the differences in satisfaction score by those two types of branches?" It gave me that. Then I said that, "Hey, what about Google reviews? Does the bank get different higher scores in Google reviews for extended R branches versus standard R?"

Abbas Merchant (23:30):

And guess what, that was a huge difference. 4.3 stars rating on branches with extended Rs versus 3.7 for this particular bank. So, really what that shows is that experimentation is critical. And just like, as you're trying to learn more, asking the right follow-up questions is important.

Jim Marous (23:56):

So, you discussed in your White Paper the concept of marketing command centers both strategic and tactical. Can you explain how these command centers actually can enable CMOs and marketing strategists to develop better strategies?

Abbas Merchant (24:10):

Yeah, absolutely. I think maybe if we take a step back and we say that what gen AI will do, and we've been talking about it a little bit, is that it's going to take the more repetitive and routine tasks that marketers do off of their plate.

Abbas Merchant (24:29):

So, whether it is creating content, creating copy, messaging, and then when you pair that, just to summarize with marketing automation and decisioning capabilities, it has the power to sort of streamline that entire sort of process of creating, testing, deploying.

Abbas Merchant (24:48):

So, that'll free up a significant amount of time, and that'll require CMOs to really rethink how do we want to create a interaction model to best harness the power of the new technologies.

Abbas Merchant (25:05):

And one of the areas that personally as well as in talking with other colleagues, I always hear them say that we'd love to spend more time on strategic issues, the big rocks, but we get really focused so much because if you don’t take care of the short term here and now, there's no tomorrow to think about. So, I think this will hopefully help us transition from big picture point.

Abbas Merchant (25:36):

If you, in perspective in thinking about the future, and there are big questions that marketers and CMOs deal with things like, "How should I allocate my marketing investment? How much should it go to short-term sales versus long-term equity building? How do I understand the increasing diverse segments of customers and their needs when they have very different preferences? And how do we evolve our value proposition in light of the changing customer expectations and the competitive landscape?"

Abbas Merchant (26:15):

These are strategic questions that we are less contemplated than we'd like. So, with the gen AI capabilities, and as it permeates through the marketing organization, what I think is that that'll give an emergence to two notions of the notion of marketing command centers, and that'll in mind sort of translate into strategic marketing command centers, which will really focus on some of the strategic questions that I've talked about.

Abbas Merchant (26:54):

Developing long-term strategy, looking and refining the value proposition that we currently have, and taking information and input and analysis from the tactic, the execution efforts and the results of the tactics to refine some of the strategies.

Abbas Merchant (27:15):

The tactical command center will focus on operationalizing on those strategies. And then of course there will be some center of excellences that'll help support each of these command centers. But the fact is that they will work in a sort of a symbiotic fashion.

Abbas Merchant (27:34):

We’ll learn by our feet on the ground the learnings that we are getting by deploying tactics which then translate into how do we refine and evolve our strategies to incorporate things that we've been successful at.

Abbas Merchant (27:53):

So, I think those are sort of the ways in which I see the strategic command center working in conjunction with sort of the tactical marketing command center.

Jim Marous (28:04):

It's going to be also interesting to see, I'm thinking about that concept and the way you wrote about it, and how generative AI can take on some of the roles.

Jim Marous (28:13):

So, if you have a small organization, it may not be the same way it's deployed the marketing command centers, but generative AI can really help play a major role, almost like an employee would within any of those command centers. So, let's take a short break here and recognize our partners.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (28:32):

Welcome back to Bank of Transform. So, I'm joined today by Abbas Merchant ex CMO and EVP at Regions Bank. We've been discussing what the future of marketing looks like in a world where generative AI becomes part of the core.

Jim Marous (28:47):

So, Abbas change management is a critical aspect of adopting new technologies like generative AI. How can CMOs and marketing leaders effectively navigate this transition to ensure that their teams are equipped with both the skills and the technologies that are needed?

Jim Marous (29:06):

Because as a group of marketing, we have sometimes more tools than we deploy. We have some sitting on the back shelves, we just can't take on everything we learned. But that whole change management, that movement from old to new, from past to future is so important. How do you make that transition work? How have you made it work?

Abbas Merchant (29:29):

No, it's a great question, and I wish I had the perfect answer, but I'll share what I have learned through my experience. The first thing is that when we think about transformations, all transformations, including tech and digital transformations, are less about the technology and more about the people. I think that's why change management is critical, and this transformation is no different.

Abbas Merchant (30:04):

Another element that I think is important to take into consideration is that the pace of change of technology is much faster than the pace of change that we adapt and adopt the technology and adapt to it.

Abbas Merchant (30:20):

Technology changes at exponential pace, humans change at a linear pace. So, even though we have all of these capabilities, change management becomes really critical.

Abbas Merchant (30:33):

And the best way to change, even though, theoretically, it may seem like that, "Hey, with these technologies in place, we can break down the silos and we can drastically change how we organize." But at the end of the day, I think really an iterative process where you try two things.

Abbas Merchant (30:54):

First is really being intentional about change management, rather than it being an afterthought. Really thinking through how we are going to go through the first iteration. Where are we going to experiment? Which areas are we going to deploy this first? How are we going to roll it out?

Abbas Merchant (31:13):

What are the skills, tools, training that we need to provide to our staff? What support do they need? What education do they need. I think all of that has to be part of the change management process, which is really a core element of adopting and adapting and benefiting from gen AI.

Abbas Merchant (31:38):

And it has been true for the other technologies in the past as well. So, I think that has worked well for me. Starting with an intentional approach rather than afterthought, providing the right training, creating that excitement about why this change is important, is critical.

Abbas Merchant (31:58):

And then rather than going for the total disruption, doing it in small areas within the organization, learning from it, and then scaling up based on the learnings and the successes.

Jim Marous (32:15):

We talk about all these opportunities. We get really excited about the potential of generative AI and our mind kind of gets overwhelmed by all that's possible. But generative AI also obviously presents challenges such as the potential for fraud, or the need to maintain consumer trust when personal data's involved.

Jim Marous (32:35):

How can marketers proactively address some of these risks and ensure some form of ethical application of generative AI as the expansion of sharing of insights and data expands?

Abbas Merchant (32:52):

Jim, it seems to me that we are living through a tale of two cities. It's the best of time. It's the worst of time. It's the age of wisdom. It's the age of foolishness. So, we live in a world of dichotomies and to your point like you, I see the power of these technologies but also, it’s peril.

Abbas Merchant (33:21):

And especially, the powerful gen AI technologies are bringing us really strong capabilities, but the bad actors have access to the same powerful tools and capabilities, and they're using for fraud. So, that creates a challenge for the marketers and for the organizations at large.

Abbas Merchant (33:49):

How do we earn and maintain the trust of our consumers? One of the concerns I have is that while we have access to all of these powerful tools, yet there's a lack of our ability to discern between fact and fiction. So, that's one area that we need to closely focus on.

Abbas Merchant (34:13):

Regarding the bad actors and the fraud and scams, I think the banks need to consider these three things. First of all, how can we proactively detect and prevent fraud in the first place? That's one thing to consider.

Abbas Merchant (34:30):

And perhaps, my thought is that one of the areas where there's huge opportunities aggregating data across the different banks so that we can learn about the instances of fraud quickly. Now, I know some of those aggregations and groups, consortiums are now being formed, and some exist, but I think that can be really powerful in that area.

Abbas Merchant (35:01):

The second is really how can we arm our consumers? How can we educate them and inform them timely and provide them insights so that they don't fall prey to scams and frauds. So, that's another area. And to me, in that area, social media is probably the fastest way to reach customers and consumers. So, that could be a strong tool in that area.

Abbas Merchant (35:30):

And then finally, it is really focusing on earning and maintaining the trust of the customer so that they feel comfortable in sharing their information with us, with the banks, so that the banks can deliver more personalized solutions that better meet their needs. So, I think those are sort of the three areas that I can think of to address some of these challenges.

Jim Marous (35:56):

It is so important too Abbas because what's cool about generative AI is it's actually the potential to build a dialogue. And as long as that dialogue involves sharing of information on a trustworthy level, the potential for generative AI goes up immensely. The more I share, the better I get results.

Jim Marous (36:19):

But as you mentioned, if we don't protect those on all levels, it's only going to take one false step, one misstep from the standpoint of identification or personalization to make it where all of a sudden generative AI becomes a flat sharing of information like it's always been. The potential is only reached if we do it well, and that’s kind of like common sense.

Jim Marous (36:44):

But when you look at generative AI, and again, the dialogue perspective of building information over time by asking questions and combining for a profile, a digital twin, if it may, that possibility is only there as long as the consumer feels like they're protected.

Jim Marous (37:01):

That's why we all value our Amazon relationship so much is they've always held our data pretty doggone close and used it appropriately.

Abbas Merchant (37:13):

Jim, just to add to it, as part of this, an important role that we have is while we are leveraging and benefiting from the automation and generative capabilities, we need to make sure we are reviewing and validating any output that we are creating. I think that plays a really critical role.

Abbas Merchant (37:35):

And then creating that feedback loop into the gen AI engine so that it's getting better and smarter, and understanding whether it is our brand, whether it is our advice and guidance, our point of view perspective, and mostly that it is generating facts that have been verified.

Jim Marous (37:56):

One of the interesting dynamics about AI is that I'm not sure if there's any employee of a financial institution that doesn't feel somewhat at risk to AI that it can do my job. However, it's my personal belief and I'd rely on it being my personal only that I can stay ahead of the sheriff, AI in this case, if I continually learn and move ahead at a faster pace than AI can, either through my creativity, my perspective on thing, my voice.

Jim Marous (38:28):

How do you prepare your marketing teams or any marketing team to be prepared for a future where future, maybe the skills that they were best at get displaced by generative AI, but there's still the need for human creativity. How do you prepare for that?

Abbas Merchant (38:47):

That's a great question Jim, and I'm an optimistic person, so I would say I'm cautiously optimistic, more optimistic than cautious, but it's important to really be cautious about this.

Abbas Merchant (39:02):

We've seen this in history that technology, technological innovation over the years has sort of transformed industries made certain industries obsolete, transformed jobs, created new jobs, and made as many jobs obsolete. So, we have seen that trend over the centuries, so to speak.

Abbas Merchant (39:32):

I'll give you an example. If you look at, in the early 1900s, 60% of our workforce was engaged in agricultural jobs. Only 10% were engaged in science, technology, engineering related roles. Today, only 2% of the people are engaged in agricultural jobs, but over two thirds of the people are engaged in STEM related careers.

Abbas Merchant (39:59):

And guess what? It's not only more jobs have been created during that timeframe, but the STEM related jobs have twice the compensation that non-STEM related jobs have. So, to me, every development of technology opens up new areas and new sort of space for us to grow into and I think gen AI will be very similar.

Abbas Merchant (40:24):

We have hinted on some of the new roles that it'll create. Whether it is prompt engineering, prompt design validation, auditing, reviewing the whole skill of how do you sort of go from collaborating with machines and simultaneously collaborating with humans.

Abbas Merchant (40:51):

Collaborating with humans is highly emotional, collaborating with machines is highly logical. I think all of this will require building new muscles and new skills for our marketing teams. And when I look ahead and think about in this vision of the future, what are some of the skills that'll be preferred, that'll be valued?

Abbas Merchant (41:30):

We will value experimentation over expertise. That'll be critical because you learn through experimentation. We'll value skills over credentials. We'll value a strategic mindset over tactical mindset. We'll value curiosity over experience. And we'll value change mindset over a status quo mindset. I think these are sort of the traits and attributes that I would instill on my team and focus, and it'll require a lot of training of our staff.

Abbas Merchant (42:15):

And finally, I would say that with in utilizing gen AI, we'll need to get even better scaled, more scale that curating content versus creating content.

Abbas Merchant (42:34):

So, thus far, we've really focused on and valued people that can create the content, whether it is creative, whether it is pros, design. We'll need to really pivot and be able to shift to building expertise and how do you curate content generated in assistance or with the help of generative AI.

[Music Playing]

Jim Marous (43:09):

Finally, Abbas, how do people get ahold of your really, really good white paper you've developed.

Abbas Merchant (43:16):

Well, thanks so much, Jim. This has been an awesome conversation. And yes, I'm on LinkedIn. I love reaching out and connecting with people on LinkedIn and my article, which is white paper, which is how gen AI will change marketing and the role of the marketer is available on my LinkedIn page.

Jim Marous (43:46):

Abbas, again, thank you so much for being on the show today. I appreciate it.

Abbas Merchant (43:49):

Thank you. It's been great.

Jim Marous (43:52):

Thanks for listening to Banking Transformed, the top podcast in retail banking and the winner of three international rewards for podcast excellence. We appreciate your support. If you enjoy what we're doing, please take some time to show some love in the form of a review.

Jim Marous (44:06):

On that note, thanks to a listener from my home state of Ohio for the recent review. She wrote, "As someone that doesn't have a lot of experience in fintech and digital banking, I have learned so much from Jim in the various experts he's had on the show. Whether you're a pro or a novice like me, it's a really fascinating podcast. Highly recommend subscribing.” I’d double down on that.

Jim Marous (44:29):

This has been a production of Evergreen Podcasts. A special thank you to our senior producer Leah Haslage, audio engineer, Chris Fafalios and video producer Will Pritts.